Fourth Plinth School Awards ceremony and exhibition.

12 May 2016

Alexandra Dreier, Academic Project Placement in City Hall’s Culture Team, writes about her experience of assisting with the preparation of this year’s Fourth Plinth School Awards ceremony and exhibition.

The exhibition of the winning entries of this year’s competition is open on the second floor of London City Hall now – time has passed to quickly!

I joined Kirsten Dunne, Senior Cultural Strategy Officer, in February to assist her with the exciting annual Fourth Plinth School Awards competition. School children from all London boroughs are encouraged to create artworks inspired by the Fourth Plinth commission on Trafalgar Square and submit them individually or in groups.

And they submitted a lot of great art! We received 2,700 entries from more than 5000 students, which was just incredible! All the submissions were then scrutinised by our wonderful judge Clare Lilley, Director of Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP). Eventually she found the winners for every borough, for special prizes and of course the winners of the first prize and the runners up for the different age categories.

I was really impressed with the thinking process involved in some of the works, as well as the level of detail the children added to their creations; some of the winning entries only reveal their entire value once you read their description. I found a work called “Tech Baby”, for example, particularly interesting because of the artist’s description of it as a baby made out of mobile phones from all over the world to depict the interconnectedness of everyone on this planet through mobile phones. On the other hand, it also depicts the rapid change in technology taking place at the moment.

I wish such a competition had existed in my hometown Munich when I was a child because I think it creates an extraordinary motivation for children to get creative and gives them an opportunity to learn about London’s public art. We’ve already had so much positive feedback from teachers who said that their students are really excited to see their works on display. I mean, who would not like to have one’s artworks exhibited at City Hall?

A few weeks ago we had the final design sign off for the exhibition, which will display professionally photographed and enlarged versions of the winning entries on the second floor of City Hall.

If you have ever wondered what a Minecraft pigeon would look like on the Fourth Plinth, or a giant cupcake, or an hourglass with golden sand, this is the exhibition for you!

The exhibition will be open to the public from 29th April to 7th July! Make sure you take some time out of your day to go and see it!

Find more information about the Fourth Plinth School Awards click here.